List of Interactive DVDs / Games ?

[theaveng]

Interactive DVDs are similar to Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Books but with video instead of text. I found this list on amazon.com:

Dragon's Lair
Space Ace
Dragon's Lair 2-Time Warp
Shadoan - DTS
Tender Loving Care
Point of View
Silent Steel
Xena Warrior Princess - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
I'm Your Man - Special Edition


Any others out there?

[digitalpress]

I also have Drug Wars, Mad Dog McCree and Time Traveler from Digital Leisure.

I have 3 different DVD players in my home and none of them play these games very well. You want to see a full-motion vdeo game run really smoothly, seamlessly on a video device? Check out the games on LaserActive. You cannot even detect when the game is loading new sequences in games like Triad Stone.

[theaveng]

What's the web address?

[theaveng]

DigitalPress: I thought Evil Otto was yellow?



I already played Drgaon's Lair and Space Ace on my Amiga 500, so I'll probably skip those and buy the Drgaon's Lair 2: Time Warp DVD.

Any other interactive DVDs worth buying?

[digitalpress]

DigitalPress: I thought Evil Otto was yellow?

Not in Frenzy, he's not. This is the ENHANCED Evil Otto.


I already played Drgaon's Lair and Space Ace on my Amiga 500, so I'll probably skip those and buy the Drgaon's Lair 2: Time Warp DVD.

How is the quality of the games on the Amiga 500? Is it FMV? Until the Sega CD I hadn't seen an attempt at recreating the game's video. In a way, I wish I never had. I've yet to see it done RIGHT.


Any other interactive DVDs worth buying?

Not that I've seen. They have terrible lag between scenes, it ruins the experience for me.

[Charlesaway]

I own DL2: Time Warp, and I have the same problem, short pauses in between every action. I kind of wish there was just an option to view the whole game run its course.

[digitalpress]

I own DL2: Time Warp, and I have the same problem, short pauses in between every action. I kind of wish there was just an option to view the whole game run its course.

I'm pretty sure you CAN! Can't you? I do know that I've watched DL2 from beginning to end, but it may have been from the original laserdisc, which I happen to own :)

Really though, Can't you?

[theaveng]

Dragons Lair and Space Ace looked really good on the Amiga (~1989). It used 320x200 resolution, however due to space limitations (512K memory) many scenes were dropped. Even with deleted scenes, Dragons Lair and Space Ace still used 6 disks and 4 disks respectively!

I'm not sure what was "wrong" with the Sega CD? Perhaps pauses in the video? Since the Amiga video was fully digitized with instantaneous memory access, that pausing never happened. True, the picture was pixelated, but back in 1989 I didn't care. I was amazed! (Yes, my mouth dropped open.)

I no longer have my Amiga, but I still have the camcorder video. I pop it in and watch it from time-to-time... reliving my wasted high school years. :-)

P.S.
The Dragon's Lair series was extremely popular on the Amiga. Besides the 3 arcade games, the company also made Dragon's Lair 3: Curse of the Mordred (8 disks!) and Space Ace 2. I've never seen them in action but I'd like to someday.

P.P.S.
"Disk" refers to the old 700K 3 1/2" magnetic floppies.

[digitalpress]

The problem with the Sega CD version of Dragon's Lair and Space Ace isn't the pause (as it is with the DVD's), it's the grainy quality of the video. Kind of like watching the game through dirty glass.

I have the ADAM version of Dragon's Lair and it's interesting what they tried to do - they created scenes from the game using sprites, and even enhanced some of the scenes (like when you're falling down the shaft on that wooden plank, you also have some monster fuck trying to blow you off of it). Ironically, this is pretty much what the new Dragon's Lair 3D does! Technology has caught up though, and now the update to the game looks as good if not better than the laser disc version.

[theaveng]

The Adam version of Dragon's Lair sounds exactly the same as the Commodore=64 version.

The Amiga version wasn't "grainy"... just pixelated...320x200. I guess the Sega CD used MPEG compression? That probably created the grainy-looking picture. (PS1 movies have the same problem). The Amiga version was made without compression so it was nice and clean.

Yep, the Amiga was an amazing graphics machine. It's a shame you never got to see it in action.

Troy

[nesman85]

there's a ninja turtles dvd with a maze on it, you control which directio :D ns to go using the arrows on the remote

[carnage6]

Just some corrections. The Sega CD version doesn't use the MPEG format. If it did, the game would have looked way better than it turned out to be.
Also, the Amiga disk versions didn't compress anything. They were completely re-done. The characters were re-drawn to turn them into sprites and as a result turned out less detailed than the arcade original. The backgrounds were just static digitized pictures for the most part.

PG

[theaveng]

Sprites? I doubt it. Sprites don't move that smoothly. It was digitized animation from the movie.

You're right about the backgrounds though. The programmers were careful to pick static scenes and thereby reduce memory usage.

Tell you want... you want to see the Amiga Dragons Lair or Space Ace in action? I'll make a copy of my video. Of course, you have to pay for the cost of the tape and shipping. :wink:

Troy

[theaveng]

Just some corrections. The Sega CD version doesn't use the MPEG format. If it did, the game would have looked way better than it turned out to be.


So, why do the Sega's video look "grainy"? What was the flaw?

[carnage6]

theaveng- Nope, the character graphics weren't digitized from the original video they were completely re-done. Probably by directly copying the original motions and animation through rotoscoping which preserved the fluid motion of the original and why it looks exactly the same (minus the drop in graphic quality). The Amiga wouldn't be able to handle a direct digitized conversion. If you played any of the sequels on computer you'll know this is true since they use almost the exact same scene in more than one game. In the DL1 game there is that demon that pops out of the pot in the green slime room while in DL3 (I think it is that game) you get the same scene and animation but only the creature in the pot is replaced by a ghostly skeleton version of Dirk.

Also, the Sega CD version is so bad because they couldn't use MPEG. They used some form of FMV compression (don't know what)but the Sega CD could only handle so much making the game look horrible. It is a really weak system as far as video is concerned. I think it can only display some really small amount of colors while playing FMV scenes. If MPEG were able to be used, it would have looked much better but the Sega CD is way too weak for that.

PG

[theaveng]

The Amiga wouldn't be able to handle a direct digitized conversion.


Hmmm. I guess if I told you that the Amiga was used to generate Babylon5's exterior space shots, you'd say I was wrong about that too? ;-)

I still think the backgrounds look like digitized stills and the characters like direct digitized animation from the laserdisc. I've seen the Amiga do some impressive movie animations... like the Star Wars Walker 2 demo. (A Walker walks through a city, and then blasts a helicopter out of the air... all with only 2 Megs of RAM.) Why not Dragon's Lair?



BTW, have you seen DL #3 and Space Ace #2? What were they based upon?

Troy

[carnage6]

theaveng- Yes but you're forgetting that Babylon 5 kind of graphics can only be done with an add-on to a powerful Amiga (a Video Toaster or something). A basic Amiga 500 with no upgrades couldn't do that. Not to mention that the Dragon's Lair games run on the most basic of Amiga hardware and was the exact same game converted to IBM and Atari ST among others. Also, add to the fact that Readysoft was never the most up to date developer. They rode DLs success for their entire existance. To me the graphics on the original computer disk versions are good but a bit less detailed than the original. I have played DL3 and it is basically some new scenes that were chopped out of DL1 & DL2 with altered graphics and some re-used scenes with altered graphics.

[theaveng]

In other words Dragons Lair 3 and Space Ace 2 were scenes that didn't fit into the first releases.

I need to go back and re-watch my Amiga video. If those are sprites, then I'm amazed. They didn't look like sprites to me.

Babylon 5: Yep, they used Amigas and Video Toasters. Re-watching the first season is always fun, because you can see the pixelation on the background scenery! By the second season, that problem was eliminated.